“A beam in darkness: let it grow.”

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

What the sunshine is to the flower, the Lord Jesus Christ is to my soul.

And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.

There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass.

I can’t be anonymous by reason of your confounded photographs. (To Julia Margaret Cameron)

So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.

Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.

A still small voice spake unto me, ‘Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?

Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die.

The voice of the dead was a living voice to me.

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the individual withers, and the world is more and more.

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

Things seen are mightier than things heard.

O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.

Love will conquer at the last.

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.

Then when the fugitive word was least expecting it I would suddenly turn the full blaze of my attention back onto it catching the culprit in the beam of my mental torch before it could sneak off again into the darkness.

Happiness is being on the beam with life – to feel the pull of life

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is possible, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it particle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

The morning beam is telling me that it’s action time!